Note: adblockers take out the Amazon image-links, but seemingly not the text links.
Woo! Pre-order the 4K version of Flash Gordon from this link and I get a pittance!
Bonus: the original “War of the Worlds” from 1953 coming to Blu Ray:
Oddly, I don’t see listings for 4K releases of “When Worlds Collide” or “Destination Moon.”
It has become a sickeningly predictable event: someone says something that upsets the unthinking unteachable mob, and then they – and pretty much anyone even tangentially associated with them – issues some sort of public apology. The apology is usually a combination of lame and embarrassing. But does it actually appease the mob?
Survey Sez: Nope.
Overall, the evidence presented here suggests that the effects of an apology are close to neutral or negative depending on the context and the demographic group. If this is the case, we may wonder why public officials do in fact so often ask for forgiveness in the face of controversy. It is possible that they apologize in order to receive better coverage from the media or even to make a story go away. In one experiment, individuals judging performances in a presidential debate were influenced by the nature of commentary they watched after the fact when compared to a control group not exposed to the opinions of pundits (Fridkin et al., 2007). Likewise, if an individual apologizes for a comment that the media finds offensive, future coverage of that individual may be better than it otherwise would be. This requires the assumption that while members of the public are hostile or indifferent to those who apologize, members of the media will provide better coverage of an individual who shows repentance. There may be little reason to assume that this is the case, however, especially considering that most of the media lean to the left (Groseclose & Milyo, 2005; Groseclose, 2011) and that liberals in this study appear to be those most likely to want to punish individuals for apologizing.
Emphasis mine.
Sometimes people do or say some reprehensible things, and in those cases an apology *may* be appropriate… *if* the person in question is actually sorry for what they did. And “sorry” because they realize they did/said something bad, not because they’re being forced into an apology. But then, it certainly seems like the bulk of the calls for public struggle sessions these days are driven not because someone did something objectively bad, but because they did or said something “offensive” (example: the artist who recently groveled because racists were tearing her down for having painted herself as a comic book superhero… with a *tan*). In which case an apology is not just bad for the apologizer, it’s bad for society in that it helps to feed the beast of fascistic cancel culture. Respond some other way.
A battle of youthful energy vs mature skill leads to pure epicness.
Some textbook defensive technique right here. That’s the kind of open field tackling that will gain you scholarship consideration.
— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) June 27, 2020
The SyFy channel just cancelled the show “Vagrant Queen.” The only really surprising things about that are either:
1) “What took so long?”
or
2) “Vagrant what? Never heard of it.”
I watched the first episode when it first aired and it was… half-assed. *Everything* about it was half-assed, from acting to makeup to dialogue to plot to especially production design and VFX, which made it look like a stablemate of “Andromeda.” The first episode was in the end utterly forgettable, and so I removed it from my watch list and promptly put the series out of my mind.
Now, the history of sci-fi TV in general, and SyFy in particular, is replete with crappy shows that last half a season or a full season, then quietly slip into the abyss. That’s just the way it goes: most shows are at best “meh.” You roll the dice and take your chances. But sometimes, some shows seem to be pre-doomed to incompetence and fail. Some shows, the suits should be able to determine to *not* go with before spending a dime. And “Vagrant Queen” is one such. How should they have known to pass on this? Simple… it was based on a comic book. More specifically, it was based on a comic book that failed spectacularly. It began as a six-issue miniseries. The first issue sold only 2,000 issues (“sold” meaning “sold to comic book shops,” not “sold to actual customers,” so the actual number of people who bought that issue is of course lower) in June, 2018. The second issue sold only 1,200 in July 2018. Issue 3 dropped to 993, and issue 4 fell to 769. Issues five and six? Apparently never actually printed, because in the comic book industry anything that sells below 5,000 or so is on the chopping block. Selling in the *hundreds* is laughably low. But the issues got reprinted as a bound “graphic novel” in February 2019… which sold only 200. And *then* SyFy decided “hey, lets spend buckets of cash on THIS property.”
Guh.
I cannot mock the creators of the comic book for their low sales… their lowest sales figures would make me giddy if *I* could reach those numbers. Their high numbers, failures by comic book industry standards? Inconceivable for my piddly ass. Selling two thousand issues of, say, US Fighter Projects #4 would make me thrilled beyond the capacity for rational thought. Might even go out and buy a pizza or something. My issue here is with SyFy, spending money on something that has *already* demonstrated a stunning lack of audience. It’s not just dumb, it’s insane. It doesn’t make a lick of sense. The only thing that seems to justify the decision is the creator: a woke intersectional SJW who seems to have made a career out of that, and little else. Did SyFY think that the SJWs of the world would actually watch the show? Seems they didn’t watch… something that SyFy should have seen coming. SJWs scream for properties created by others to include quotas of inclusion… but when those properties bend the knee, the SJWs still don’t watch or buy. They care about the details of things they don’t care for.
If SyFy wants to spend a lot of money on a property with a very small existing audience, I’d recommend they go after “War With The Deep Ones,” “Pax Orionis” and the Zaneverse stories. I can guarantee these would be better received than “Vagrant Queen.”
For further details:
In January I signed my very first book contract, for a heavily illustrated aerospace history text Yet To Be Publicly Described. The manuscript and all the diagrams were due to be turned in to the publisher in July. And then… Commie Cough comes along, book stores close, supply chains collapse. Perhaps surprisingly, the book was not cancelled, but instead delayed by one year. Sigh, oh well, okay.
So today, I signed a *second* book contract with the same publisher. This is for a slightly smaller text on a different subject, but similar in idea: a boatload of aerospace diagrams. Book One looks to have around 180 diagrams; Book Two will top out somewhere in the area of 120. This one has a due date of January, 2021.
If you like the US Aerospace Projects publications I’ve put out, then you’ll go bonkers for these books.
An aside: for public discussion purposes, the first book is “Book X.” The second book would thus be either “Book Y” or perhaps “Book XX.” In which latter case if and when I sign a third book contract, that would should prove quite interesting.
MANY people in custody, with many others being sought for Vandalization of Federal Property in Lafayette Park. 10 year prison sentences! @FBIWFO pic.twitter.com/mrLyxbWNvq
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2020
As a general rule, it is better to try to understand, *truly* understand, the whys and wherefores of the world. But on occasion problems are such (as today, when confronted with a Computer Issue That Should Not Be) that figuring them out is simply too troublesome, time consuming or expensive, and it makes a lot more sense to simply replace the problematic thing and move on with life. Sometimes it’s just not worth the bother of trying to truly understand. And thus…
Before the Convair Atlas ICBM proved that it was possible for a rocket to reach out across the world and deposit some canned sunlight reliably close to commie targets, it was understood that the only way to accomplish the task was with pilots and bombardiers. But by the mid 1950’s the idea of subsonic manned bombers sneaking into the heart of the Soviet Union without getting swatted was starting to seem nonsensical. So Bell Aircraft, under the direction of former V-2 program director Walter Dornberger, dreamed up the MX-2276: a three-stage manned rocket bomber. Looking akin to an evolved Sanger Antipodal Bomber, the MX-2276 used two manned and winged stages, with an unmanned expendable stage in between. The final stage would carry a single gliding nuclear warhead deep into the USSR, using the human crew to attain some measure of accuracy.
But then the Atlas came along and ruined all that.
The idea persisted, however, turning first into the Bomber Missile (BoMi) then the Rocket Bomber (RoBo) then Dyna Soar. With each step it became less fantastical, and also less of a dedicated weapon system; by the end of the Dyna Soar, it was a one-man experimental re-entry vehicle launched by a fully expendable Titan IIIC. Since then the idea of a “rocket bomber” has popped up from time to time, but never with the level of seriousness displayed in the mid/late 1950’s. For more on the whole BoMi program, see Aerospace projects Review issues V2N2, V2N3 and V2N4. APR issue V3N4 gives a pretty complete rundown of the final Model 2050E Dyna Soar.
Sparta The Mean Kitty has died.
After Raedthinn and then Fingers, this is all too damned familiar.
If you are unfamiliar, Sparta was one of the original Internet Cats, with a music video from 2007 racking up 91 million views:
Sigh. This year, man. Doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better. Could always get worse.
